Guinness Cupcakes with Baileys Buttercream Frosting

Good morning guys! With St. Patrick’s Day coming up I thought I’d share with you these super yummy [and ridiculously easy] Guinness Cupcakes.

My obsession with combining baked goods and booze started a couple years ago when I discovered these amazing Salted Mudslide Cookies which inspired me to create my own Chocolate Cherry Baileys Cookies. So when I accidentally ended up with a case of Guinness before Christmas, the obvious solution was to throw it all into something with chocolate.

Turns out, TONS of people have already done this! The first recipe I tried were these Guinness Brownies with Baileys Frosting which were delicious and a HUGE hit at the office when I brought them in on Monday morning [can’t imagine why…]. But after making them a couple of times, and only being halfway through the case of Guinness, it was time to try something different. Since the Guinness and brownie combination was so good, combining Guinness and chocolate cake seemed like the obvious next step.

I also wanted to get a bit creative this time and do something I could call my own, but before I started researching how to make your own cake recipe, I remembered coming across several pins on Pinterest where someone was raving about how well mixing a can of pop with a box of cake mix works. I’ve always been super skeptical about this because seriously how is that even possible?

This seems like a Pinterest fail waiting to happen.

But since I still had a couple bottles of beer left and cake mix is cheap I figured why not?

So I bought a box of Betty Crooker Devil’s Food Cake Mix and threw it into a bowl along with a bottle of beer. That’s it. No eggs. No fat. Just the beer.

I tasted some of the batter before baking it and wasn’t a huge fan so I was a little worried about how they were going to turn out [although I imagine if you actually like Guinness by itself the batter might have been ok]. As soon as they came out of the oven and cooled enough to eat without burning my mouth I jumped right in and ohmygoodness they tasted SO much better! The beer seemed to make the cake even lighter and fluffier, but it also made the cupcakes taste a little less sweet which is perfect if you choose to frost them with a Baileys Buttercream frosting like I did.

These cupcakes were a huge hit at both my office AND Matt’s office and with St. Patrick’s Day just around the corner, I’ll definitely be making them again!

Baileys Buttercream Frosting

Instructions

Cupcakes

Heat oven to 350F. Line a muffin tin with cupcake papers. Spray the entire pan with cooking spray and set aside.

Combine the cake mix and Guinness in a large bowl. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed for 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and continue beating on medium speed for 2 minutes, scrapping down the sides of the bowl halfway through.

Divide batter evenly among muffin cups.

For mini cupcakes, bake for 11 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center of a cupcake. Remove from muffin tin and allow to cool. Chill in refrigerator for at least an hour before frosting.

Baileys Buttercream Frosting

Using a hand mixer or stand mixer, beat butter and icing sugar until combined. Add Baileys and vanilla. Beat on medium speed for a minute or two until smooth and creamy.

Using a piping bag and the decorating tip of your choice, frost each cupcake individually.